Arrived in New York City barefoot and while looking for shoes, decided to stay. Remember that day just like yesterday, October streets of New York City teeming with excitement. First kisses of the newly arrived crispy fall’s wind-chill were lifting the canopies and stretching the flags on buildings facades.New York City is a kind of a new Eternal City, a spectacular orchestra with an invisible maestro commanding this never-ending cacophony of visual collages and sound vibrations. It is an incredible source of energy and motion. Latin beat of one of the many parades spilling out to sidewalks, swallowing people’s dancing shadows in the afternoon sunlight. I called them dancing dreamers dancing into oblivion, bodies aching just to be submerged in these inspirational “carnival” surroundings.


Discovering the aural soul of New York City, Moontripper spent countless days roaming the dusty streets and noisy underground with a digital audio recorder, in a search of New York’s heartbeat, unheard voices, strange people and strange sounds,. According to him, the city is acoustically a very musical place, its energy and vitality easily infusing the eager listener’s ear. “It possesses the mind’s natural biorhythms with its groove mantra” he says. To absorb it, you just walk the downtown streets and put yourself in a meditative but alert state of mind. Created various sample collections and incorporated some of the sounds in his electronic recordings, proved the success of those early “sonic hunts”. It’s not unlikely that the parts of the grooves in his songs come from such various places as the hotel printers, midnight garbage trucks or the roars of the subway arriving into the station.


Who is Moontripper? This captivating writer, producer composer and artist who first became known under the moniker Moontripper in mid 90’s is a New York City rooted producer and remixer, Vlad Rebek. Born in Slovakia, back when it still was part of the former Czechoslovakia behind the “Iron Curtain”, a true refugee escaped that paradise 2 years before the Wall (Berlin Wall) came down and ended up after a long and thrilling trek in New York City of all places. Learned to play acoustic guitar in his mid teens, the creative music bug came back biting deep. Studied voice with several coaches and actually performed and collaborated in the local mostly “underground” circuits with various artists and bands, solo. In the late 80’s and early 90’s when the “techno” or “trance” or “electronica” were virtual unknowns in the US, besides places like NYC or LA, instead of making commercial music he preferred experimenting with new sounds and rhythms, this has earned him a “rambunctious renegade” status by the Billboard magazine. He discovered the huge potential and power of samplers, synthesizers and electronic productions in the early 90’s. Tested his tracks at now already legendary New York City spots such as the Tunnel or the Limelight with the help of forthcoming DJ’s. Released few records with labels such as the Strictly Rhythm, King Street ’s Nitegrooves, and the first time he started to use the name Moontripper was around the time of his single record release by the Oxygen Music Works. Since then his life’s priorities have shifted, but he still continues to produce and remix other artists.

Countless collaborations followed; some of them fruitful some of them not. Collaboration is a creative effort that has to flow in complete symbiosis of all participating on many different levels. At times it can be quite difficult. Unless all collaborators share the common goal and have the approximately the same amount of drive or better word for it is “hunger”, it is impossible to get the right results. Later on he started to offer his remixing services which he still does, within limits to this day.


As the musical trends evolve, what were previously considered “underground” styles slide into “commercial” territory and this is how the tectonic musical shift continues to rumble and chases the fault line of the creative spirit’s genius essence.




Sound or else. Sound is everywhere.

Firefly Shower Not too shallow and not too deep, it will infuse some energy into your day

Dance

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